“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely audible.
He removed her other glove. “Did I ever tell you, when we first married, I never quite knew what you looked like? Your face changed every time I saw you. And when you came back from America, I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”
Ruffles on her gown brushed the back of his hand.
“So…if I’d been away for a little longer, I’d have been able to walk past you without you recognizing me?”
“I quite doubt it. Your eyes do not change. Your gait does not change. And your footsteps—I can always tell when you pass by my door.”
She let out a breath.
He touched her hair, the careful crown of it her maid had constructed earlier in the evening, pulled out two of the amethyst pins, and tossed them aside. They landed with small, muffled thuds against the carpet and the lace cloth spread upon her vanity table.
How long had he been curious about this day, this hour?
Since the Italian trip, certainly. Though if he had to be precise, he would guess it to have been that crucial meeting during which they wrested control of Cresswell & Graves from Mr. Graves’s subordinates.
He’d firmly buried that curiosity: A pact was a pact. They’d shaken hands on eight years and eight years he intended to keep his hands to himself.
But buried things had a funny way of sprouting roots and feelers just beneath the consciousness. So that when he did at last acknowledge it, he found himself facing not the same small seed of desire, but a jungle of lust.
And she, who felt as deeply and relentlessly as any other mortal, but kept such a serene facade, had she, too, hidden nuggets of yearning in the least frequented corners of her mind?
She kept a decided silence, but beneath his fingers there were tremors: She, with her ladylike, tightly laced ways, did not want to give in to something as common and vulgar as lust.
But he wanted her to. He wanted to break apart her facade piece by piece.
The very thought of it took his breath away. Eight years of platonic friendship, of keeping to affable yet firm limits of conduct, of not thinking about how it would be when they at last came together—
A subtle perfume rose from her skin, rich, golden, and mouthwatering. Lavender honey, that must be it: Their soap was made with not only distilled lavender essence, but also the lavender honey from their fields.
He inhaled her. It was only natural that next he bent his head and kissed her on her bare shoulder.
A white-hot heat pulsed from her shoulder to her fingertips. The intensity of it stunned Millie. Had he wrought permanent damage to her nerve endings? Would she wake up in the morning with no sensation at all in her extremities?
But no, he kissed her again, at the base of her neck, and liquid fire scorched her once more.
Faintly she became aware that he was still extracting her jeweled hairpins. They fell soundlessly upon the carpet. Equally faintly she saw the need to ask him not to do that. Or she’d have to remember to gather them up before Bridget came in the morning with her cocoa.
It would be too embarrassing for Bridget to know what had taken place during the night, especially as in six months’ time he would be doing exactly this with Mrs. Englewood, touching her arm, kissing her shoulder, taking down her dark, glossy hair.
Except he’d be at it with much greater fervor and impatience, wouldn’t he, driven by a desire that had smoldered for more than a decade? None of this courtly consideration, these deliberate little touches that annihilated her but affected him not at all.
She was thankful for the dark. He might yet feel the tremors beneath her skin, but at least he would not glimpse the parting of her lips, or the closing of her eyes—involuntary reactions that she could not quite control, which would completely give away her pretense of amiable indifference.
He kissed her on her ear, a kiss with the barest hint of moisture to it. She could not breath for the electricity of it, a violent spark of pleasure that shook and scarred. His fingers caressed her shoulders. His lips pressed into her exposed nape. Dark, hot sensations spiked into her.
She clenched her teeth tight. Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds. If she remained as silent as the night, he would not know how she felt. He would not.
The buttons on her back gave away as if before a Mongol horde. The small cap sleeves at her shoulders sagged. He pushed them down, his hands lingering on the inside of her elbows.
The skirt of the ball gown was a monument of ruching and pleating. It contained so much understructure that even with the bodice of the gown hanging limply in defeat, it still stood upright on its own, stalwartly defending her virtue with silk ramparts and chiffon moats.
He simply lifted her bodily and—good Lord—did he kick her magnificent and costly ball gown out of the way?